The Power of Complementary Strengths in Business Partnerships | JoBen Barkey and Nancy Orozco

You are working with great people, good people. You know, the culture is good. And I said, that's just as important, if not maybe even more important than the bullet points. So we just looked at everything and I've always worked with great people that I'm still friends with today. And so I look at it from that standpoint. Great. We share the same core values. We have great people. I'm able to work in something that I love and that I know that I can do well. But that's just as important, I think, at least for me personally.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the Rocket Fuel podcast where visionary and integrator duos from entrepreneurial companies share a behind the scenes look at their relationship. These amazing leaders blend their unique skills to create Rocket Fuel. I'm your host, Mark C. Winners, co author of Rocket Fuel and an expert EOS implementer. Today, I'm thrilled to be talking with Jovan Barke and Nancy Orozco from Soccer Shots llc, an engaging children's soccer program that positively impacts children's lives on and off the field through best in class coaching, communication and curriculum. In this episode we explore the process of finding the right visionary integrator partnership. Jobin and Nancy walk through the hiring process from both sides and share the insights that help them find their partnership balance. It's exciting to see how they've helped each other expand in their roles and allowed the business to thrive as they each fill in where the other has weaknesses. We're starting the podcast with with Jobin talking about discovering his visionary fit and realizing that he needed an integrator. Let's hop in.

I read Traction twice through in 11 days and had a little bit on the visionary integrator and so I went right to Rocket Fuel. I read Rocket Fuel and when you test in extremes, like I'm a 10 quick start. Like when you test in extremes, you can pick yourself out when you're being described. And so I every description, everything on the list for visionary, I was like yep, yep, yep. I mean the good and the bad. So fortunately it has another session that talks about how to fill that gap. And so I have slowly learned as an entrepreneur, we tweak everything. I've slowly learned. Just stand on the shoulders of giants and don't move sometimes. And so I copy pasted the integrated description into a job posting and I had 128 applicants and I was like oh my gosh, how do you find the one that checks all these boxes? Because I need this, I need literally everything that in the integrator description is the opposite of me. And I was the limiting factor. I had all the big dreams, I had all the ideas that no one else was coming up with, but achieving them and making them a reality. I was sitting in the hallucination seat for a while there, and so I posted that and then narrowed it down to 10, narrowed it down to three, interviewed Nancy, and then, so.

So hang on, how'd you narrow it? So you got 128. How'd you narrow it to the 10?

Well, I actually asked two other people on the leadership team to look through and pick their 10 favorite.

Good.

And I picked my 10 favorite. And I figured where there's crossover, we got to be getting close. So I showed up to that meeting, and the other two hadn't done anything. So I was like, we'll go with my 10 then. And we went through it. And as I was reading them out, um, it was really clear for sure the. The 6, 7 that were not going to be a fit. I was just trying to come up with 10. And so when we got down to the last three, one no showed for the interview. And then I had a great interview with Nancy and this other lady, and it just came down to who actually checks the most of these boxes. And for me, it was very clear that it was Nancy.

So, Nancy, talk about your experience of that process. So you're out there in the world doing whatever you were doing, and then you. You send your resume in to this opportunity. What was the ad or the posting that resonated with you that made you think, hey, this is something I might. I might be a fit for?

I'm a very direct person. And the fact that the bullet points were described essentially to, like, my strengths, my skill set, that was really important to me as well as, like, working with great people, that was also on the top of my list. So we joked about this, but I did just as much research and in depth conversations to make sure that it was a great fit. But I think it was like he said, I didn't know this at the time. Right. But that description from Rocket Fuel, where it's to the point, but more importantly, it's describing all the. The skill sets that I already had experience with in other industries, even through doing my own business. And so it just seemed fitting to at least entertain it and talk to them and see what the organization was about.

Cool. So sometimes when I talk to visionaries about when they're interviewing integrators, I hear things like, it didn't feel like somebody that I didn't really, necessarily enjoy the interview. They felt very different from me, and it's kind of stuff like that. And then fortunately, they had kind of people around them or a structure around them that sort of reminded them and guided them that, no, this is really what you need. Because a lot of times visionaries left on their own. They'll hire people that are a lot like them, which is not what they need more of. They need something very different from them. So, Jobin, what was your feeling? Was Nancy. Did you feel that she was very different from you? Did you notice that?

I knew exactly what I needed. And I had been leading people for long enough where it was pretty clear where I was coming up short. And I don't like letting people down, but I tend to try not to let them down up front by saying yes. And then I can't do it. I just said yes to way too many things. And I say yes to things that are outside of my even scope of ability. But I'm like, I'll figure it out, right? I'll build the. I'll sew the parachute after I jump. I can do this. And so Nancy came in, and what I wanted to hear was, so I will beat around the book. I can tell you exactly what I think this person should do, but when they get in the room, I'm like, oh, my gosh. And sometimes they feel like they just came in and got praised the entire time when really they're on the edge of, like, being asked to move on to a different opportunity in a different organization. And so I was looking for someone who was going to be direct with me, who is confident. I like having strong women in leadership roles in my company, especially in the industry that we're in, working with children. I really feel like that balances me out. And so I've had numerous iterations of people that have done some executive and director of operations type roles, but Nancy was the big upgrade that I'd been looking for. And so when I was talking to her, I had already interviewed the other person. But when I was talking to Nancy, I was starting to think, like, okay, how do I break the news to the other person? Because I knew I was hearing. I was hearing the plug that filled all the holes in my leadership.

So, Nancy, tell us your experience of that. So the first interview, when you're in there and you're really getting your first exposure to what Jobin's all about, and he's wired in his visionary energy and all this kind of stuff, what did you notice what jumped out?

I think Going into like a small to medium business. Right. Like, I've worked with both capacities, like large corporate, smaller business. There were friends involved, best friends involved. And so once I knew we had like the checkboxes, so to speak, like the bullet points. Okay, great. We would be great counterparts. Right. I know that I have this skill set or these strengths. I really started looking what we would all call, like, the core values and the culture that was just as important to me. So I think that they are surprised by the questions I was asking because I just said, who is this person? Like, what kind of person is this? Am I going to have freedom or are they like micromanagers? I just kind of dived into what kind of people am I working with? Not just the owners, but just everybody involved. And I just started to get to know them personally through conversations and many kind of zoom calls, so to speak. And at the end, I asked one of their top directors at the time that we're still very good friends with today, and I just said, hey, you've done a wonderful job. And I felt almost like he was like trying to sell it to me too. Like he wanted me to join the team. Right, okay. And I said, hey, this is all great, but if I'm your sister, I'm your mom, I'm your niece, and I ask you right now, would you take this job? Would you recommend this organization? Would you confidently be able to say yes? And I think he was shocked that I was asking that. No one had asked that question before. And he said, yes, yes, you are working with great people, good people. The culture is good. And I said, that's just as important, if not maybe even more important than the bullet points. So we just looked at everything, and I've always worked with great people that I'm still friends with today. And so I look at it from that standpoint. Great. We share the same core values. We have great people. I'm able to work in something that I love and that I know that I can do well. But that's just as important, I think, at least for me personally.

Right. 100%. So we talk about the two piece puzzle. So your visionary and integrator profiles fitting together, and what you're looking for and what you need in the others that's complementary to you, that's so important. And then it's all in the wrapper of core values and the culture of the company, what you're trying to do, aligning with the business you're in and the purpose that you have. So from there now, you're together now. Trust, it turns out, is a pretty big thing. So how did you move down that path to begin to build that foundation of trust where you could really operate at a level that I know you both were striving to be able to operate at? What was key for that?

Yeah, trust is the big word there. So I'm a fairly trusting person, and so when somebody tells me something, I take it at face value. And so everything that Nancy was saying, and she's been kind. The first interview was like, four hours. I was asking a lot of questions, too, probably way too many. But once that four hours was done, I'm like, okay, I trust the capacity of this person. I trust it. I am convinced. Now it's just a matter of building the relationship. That helps me trust the intention. When we're on the opposite side of issues and we're maybe having points of contention, do we trust each other's intention? And the intention being alignment in our values, alignment in where we want to see the company go and how we want to see people internally treated as we go along. Right. What does it look like when someone's no longer a fit? What does it look like when someone's ready to move up and maybe we don't have a spot? How do we manage that together? And Nancy is much more direct. She's three bullet points, and I'm three paragraphs. And so I learned pretty early on that I had to learn. When I had something that was really important to me, I had to bring it to her and show her that I'd put the time in to get it down closer to three bullet points, because that proved to her I'd worked on it and for her, equally, she was learning. At the same time, she was learning to expand the three bullet points, because that convinced me that she had done the background right. And so we just kind of learned what the other person wanted. And by showing up and trying to speak each other's language and trying to communicate in a way where our intention would be heard, I think we very quickly were able to develop the trust that even when we're on the opposite side of things, we still are aligned in where we're trying to go. And it actually happened fairly quickly. It's not hard to trust the capacity and the intention of someone like Nancy. They're just so direct with exactly what they want and what success and a win looks like. I just learned to row. I learned to put my paddle in and do the same thing she was doing. And then we got there a lot Quicker. So for me, that was the process of. Of building trust. The trust for capacity, day one.

Love that. So you talk about kind of understanding the differences that we have, and of course, we teach using profiling tools like Colby and others. You mentioned your high quickstart, your 10 quick start, right? So you're obviously your Colby. And through those tools, we understand that we're different. No right or wrong. Right. Somebody's different than I am. If I understand what they're doing, it may point out that thing they do that drives me crazy. They're not doing it to drive me crazy. They're just doing it because that's what they do. And similar things happening from my side. And it's not my job to convert all the way to what they are or theirs to convert all the way to what I am. But it's both of our responsibility to find that common ground in between where we can be effective. Right. So that's what I hear in that story. So, Nancy, from your perspective, was there anything that happened, like some sort of an event or some kind of a discussion, something that happened early on or whenever in your relationship that on the other side of that you just noticed, okay, I trust this person a lot more than I did before we went through that, anything like that that kind of helped bring it to the front, bring it to the top?

So Jobin described it really well. I think it happened fairly quickly. I think what he's talking about with communication, I had that realization when I was giving him the bullet points, and then he was asking for more questions, more of the details. I took it as, oh, he doesn't trust me, right? We're talking like week one, week two, right? We're having discussions, meetings, and we just talked it through. And just in getting to know him and then knowing myself, I understood, okay, he's asking for the details because he wants to make a plan, not because there's no trust. And so we both learned that, I think, very quickly, just our different communication styles and then just learning, like, environment, right. Sometimes there is a place for the bullet points. And then other. Other times, like our same page, we're going to bring it all to the table, all the details, all the data. But we just learned, I think, very quickly what that was about, that it wasn't a trust issue. It was just a communication style.

So on that note, Nancy, some of my integrators will talk about how they know when to bring up certain kinds of topics with their visionary. So there's certain things that they won't do. It when they don't have enough time, certain things they actually won't do it unless they're like at a meal and then it's a question of whether it's before the meal or after the meal. People really kind of have this whole code that they're solving, it seems for their counterpart here. Any inside knowledge you can give us for part of your code for communicating effectively with Chauvin, I think that's probably.

Going to be very different for every visionary integrator relationship. Right. So speaking to this with me and Jobin, I just know what things I need to run by him versus hey, like I own this box, I own all the boxes and I've been put in this place because I'm trusted to make that decision. And I just know that we agree on this. Like these are our core values, this is the mission. And if I have to ask myself is this getting in the way we then to me that's like small details that I can handle versus a bigger issue that can maybe wait for the same page. I think you just create that over time and then something that maybe was, I thought an issue two days ago, all of a sudden, guess what? It's not. There's something else happening today. I think it's just time building that over time experience of oh, he doesn't want to know about these little things, he just wants to know what the budget is for them. Right. It's learning, but that's just over time experience I think.

Right. So it's that repetition and that shared experience where you just begin to develop that, that, that shared understanding. So Jobin, I know that you're big fan of Eos. You use EOS in your family to the point that your wife Amanda is actually an EOS implementer and she's actually your EOS implementer for the company. So talk to me about that. What's that like having your spouse as your EOS implementer?

Yeah, I think that probably, there's probably a lot of scenarios where that wouldn't work.

I can think of one.

Amanda and I have a very special relationship. We started dating the night we met. We were engaged. I bought a ring. Six weeks later we were engaged. Four months after the day we met and we were the night we had our wedding, she looked at me and she was like, one year ago today, I had never met you and I had no, I'd never even heard of you. And now we're married. And so it's been 18 years since then and five kids. Are you familiar with Myers Briggs and the different personality types. So we started with that and then we transitioned to an organization called Giant Worldwide that uses the five voices. And so it kind of simplified the 16 personality types. I'm an ENFP, but I don't have to memorize 15 other letter combinations to know how the personalities interact. Five voices gave us tools to better understand what we were saying. Based on. I believe we're a combination of three things. Nature, nurture, and choice. Nature, how we're biologically hardwired. Nurture, life events happen to us, and then choice. Right. And so I want to choose to always honor her publicly and privately. My dad set a really good example of that for me with my mom. They've been just had their 50th wedding anniversary. And so for me, it's not hard, it's not difficult for me to respect my wife when she's in a place of authority over an experience or a meeting. And so when they're in those meetings, I will be honest, on the first one, I talked over her. I, like, was misquoting from the books because I was a reformed recovering self implementer. I, like, I was a disaster in the first. I was in Anaheim Hills where like the police station is. We rented a little room and I just talked over everything and we got through a third of the things on the agenda. I learned pretty quickly that I just, like with Nancy, I needed to understand that there's a time when I'm in charge and there's a time when I'm not in charge. And that was a time when I'm not in charge. And so Amanda having been out of operations for quite a while and EOS allowed us to do that. She wasn't coming in with any connection to the weeds. She was 30,000ft. She only sat in the owner's box of the company. That was it. And so she was disconnected enough where she. I could tell right away she was providing a perspective I couldn't self generate. We cannot self generate an outside perspective. But because she was out of operations, she was able to provide it. And then Amanda, her capacity is so high and her patience is so good, and she's able to sit in the awkward, uncomfortable silence and until you say the thing that everybody knows you need to say. And so I started to experience those things from her and I looked around the room and I saw the room respecting her. And that's important too. She wasn't the boss's wife. She was the boss of this meeting and the boss of the direction. We're trying to Go. So it wasn't challenging for me and it wasn't challenging for anyone in our organization because I believe we have a culture. We've intentionally built a culture of high trust. And so there were no challenges and no issues. And Amanda always calls the three of us this powerhouse team. We're the tricycle. Every wheel's important on this tricycle. We're doing life together. Certainly Nancy has her own family and we have our family, but we are in many ways doing life together.

Right.

And we really enjoy each other's company. So no issues having Amanda as an implementer. For me it was a. It was math. Right. I'm like, okay, so I could hire somebody to really do this or I paid the exact same amount of money and she goes and makes money doing this. And so, I mean that's how my brain worked. I had to make it work with her as the implementer. Cause I was part of the plan.

Yeah, it obviously worked. And Amanda is a fantastic implementer. She's a great part of our community. She's one of my favorites. So you're really fortunate to have her in my view. How many times have you tried to document processes? Taking months to get it done, Carrying process rocks over quarter after quarter, not ever finishing. It can be difficult to get started with step two of the three step process documentary. So get started right away with Whale. The go to platform to identify document and package processes all the way to followed by all Whale. The fastest way to get your team aligned. Start for free at usewhale IO. So Nancy, aside from her being an implementer, you're an integrator for a business that has a husband and wife ownership. Right. So what's that like? Does that present challenges? Is there a certain dynamic that goes on there that you have to be kind of conscious of, aware of and help manage? Manage for effectiveness.

So like Joven mentioned, when I started with Amanda was in operations doing our social media. But it was not like she wasn't part of our meetings and things of that nature when we first got started. Right. She did the harder job, we always say. Right. Like of being a stay at home mom and homeschooling and all of that. So she knew enough to be dangerous. Right. Like a how the business model works and what's going on. But she wasn't in the weeds at the beginning. Later maybe Joban was it two or three years in when you and Seth parted and then she kind of started attending. Right. She just started getting more involved, learning eos and coming to the L10 meetings. And I think she just always did a great job of like what we mentioned before, just respecting the boxes. Right. So on the accountability chart, if I own social media box, then that's my place of authority. And I think she just, yeah, she just had a really great mutual respect for me, certainly, and I respected her. And so having that relationship prior, I think was really healthy and easy for her to like step in and dive in with us more into this journey.

Love that. So Nancy, in the pre call, our producer said that Choban said that you're not a Debbie Downer. So Nancy's not a Debbie Downer. So what does that mean? What do you think that means? And what is it that you do so that you're not a Debbie Downer to Jobin?

I think that what I've learned to do in many, many years of being in leadership or management positions is to always hear things through, right. So everybody talks and makes fun of the visionary thing coming in, getting excited about 20 ideas, right? Or like this grand big idea of just listening through, asking questions, right. And just kind of seeing all signs of it, right? Like, well, what did we agree to in the quarterly were our top priorities in doing one on ones with my leadership team? What am I hearing from them? Their challenges and their struggles, what's in their pipeline? What are the rocks for this quarter? And then now he's coming in with this grand idea, but is that really going to move us or do I need to just tell him like, hey, this is for next quarter. It's a great idea, but this is for next quarter. So I try to give the perspective that I'm not going to just say no, but I'm gonna like, look at everything in terms of do we have the bandwidth? Do we have the capacity to take this on right now? And it just depends. I mean, some things are minor that we can incorporate tomorrow, you know, that we all certainly look at. And then there's bigger things that need to wait because of the industry we're in or the market.

It comes down to listening to understand. And then it's not the flat. No, but it's the yes, if. Yes, if we do it later. Yes, if this and that is we kind of figure out a different way. Something has to give a lot of times. Right, Right. And so Jobin, is that how you feel? Do you feel heard? Do you feel like your ideas all end up in the right place sometimes, do they not? And you get frustrated by that. How often are you frustrated?

Not very often. Nancy's being kind. There was Actually, a point early on, know thyself to lead thyself, right? And so there was a point early on in our working relationship where I was thinking through like, I need to know myself the whole hiring process and then starting to work together. I'm like, I need to know myself so I know exactly what I'm looking for. And then I need to invite them to actually sit in those spots, those blind spots for me. And that requires letting go in some ways. And so I had this aha moment where I was like, I can gift them with the freedom if I can just give them the terminology and the phrasing that I know I will hear well, so why wouldn't I tell them? And so I sat down with Nancy and then with the whole leadership team, and I said, guys, there's some things I do really well. So one thing I've done well is I've articulated, once I figured out where I sit, I've articulated that pretty well for my team. And I've also supported that with like. But also, guys, this is what I'm terrible at. And this is why I need you guys so badly and I appreciate you. So what I said to them was, guys, I think at the time I was. I'm 45 now. I think I was about 38, 37. And just for age context, for my next statement, I said, guys, I know that I'm a lot older than a lot of you because I have a lot of college age kids that work for us. Fortunately, Nancy is close enough to me where she understands me without being as old as me. But I said, guys, you have to look at me as just a really big second grader, because that's what I'm like. I'm very excited about my most recent idea. And my most recent idea is the new priority for the whole team. That's how I think, right? And so if I come into the room and I sit down and I'm like, guys, two hands on the table. And I'm standing up and I'm just. I'm so excited. I'm going to dominate 20 minutes of this conversation because I'm so excited. They have to hear that excitement. And then I told them, just shift into this conversation. Just say, wow, Joe, Ben, this sounds like you've put a lot of effort and time and thought into this. It sounds like a really big idea. And then you just sit on that for a second, like you're actually thinking about it. And then you say to me, we're in quarter one and we just launched a Whole lot of big ideas from our two day annual. It feels like in order to do this really well, this could get bumped and maybe should get bumped to a quarter three. This should get bumped to a quarter three initiative when we have the bandwidth to do it really well and execute it to our capacity, our potential, when we're at our best. Does that sound like something that would work? And I'm like, oh, yeah, because it sounds like we're all on board. Right? When I told them right after. The reality is, is next week, I don't care about this idea anymore. I have a new biggest idea. And so if you can just get past the big excitement without popping the balloon all the way, it keeps me energized, it keeps me feeling like people are appreciating my big ideas. And then it can go on an issues list and then eventually disappear from the issues list without ever happening. No one needs to stress out. But that was the terminology I gave them. And I said, guys, I'm going to know exactly what you're doing and I'm still going to eat it up and love it. And so just talk to me through that filter and we're going to be able to navigate when I come in with the shiny objects and I'm the squirrel running around. So Nancy was too kind. She did not mention that everybody thinks of me as a second grader when I get super hyped up. But that's the terminology we use. And it navigates off that. Me thinking every single idea is urgent and important.

Love that. I gave a talk a couple of years ago at the EOS conference on how to be a great visionary. And So I gave 10 pillars of what that means and what that looks like. And so one of the rules in that talk is as a visionary, you shouldn't tell them everything you're thinking, right? Because here's what happens is you tell them without the guidance, right? So you've given them some guidance on that, the team some guidance on that. But a lot of visionaries didn't think that through and so they're just popping off, idea, idea, idea. And then they come back that next week and there's been resources committed, there's action, there's all kinds of stuff. And then they're, why are you doing that? Well, you told us to, you said it, we thought it was important. It's like, no, no, no, no. I was just talking, I was just thinking out loud. I was just ideating, right? And so gotta be self aware, right? You mentioned that, right? Know yourself and so being self aware that other people react, other people move when you say things. And so you gotta either set a framework, set a filter, have a way that those ideas go somewhere to kind of incubate for a little bit to see if they're really real, and then maybe they come into your same page with your integrator and then they go to the leadership team and so on. So I love, I love hearing that. So Jobin, you said something to the effect of, with Nancy, chaos meets order. What'd you mean by that?

I am chaos. So again, I mean, if you're constantly coming up with new ideas, like when I'm at my best, I'm being told, generate 20 really big ideas this quarter. That's your job. Go out and do that. Come up with the industry shifting, come up with the revolutionary idea that helps you break through another ceiling. That's your job. It protects the rest of our jobs, it protects the organization. Like that is when you're at your best. And so knowing rocket fuel, knowing Eos, it gave me permission to sit in that chaos of constantly generating ideas. And I had permission to not be the one that had to decide which one. And so when you get released from the stress, for me it was stressful, right? Not stressful at all. To think of a thousand ideas. Very stressful to pick one. I can see it in my 12 year old son. All right, you can have any candy you want that? Okay, we're gonna be there for 30 minutes while he picks between candies, right? I'm the same way. Like you can have any idea you want. Pick one. I'm like, oh, no. So for me, I think maybe because I was a little bit, I was a little bit mature in my role at that point. When I met Nancy, I was ready, I was ready for someone else to have the decision making on yes, no, right now or later. And so I was able to live in the chaos and be comfortable in it because no part of my job required me to figure out how to organize the chaos. All I had to do was just keep my mouth shut, like you said, when I was around people that weren't a part of that decision making process. And I think there's a lot of crossover between life lessons you learn and business lessons you learn. For me, one time I told my wife before bed, I could just move to Portugal tomorrow. We'd save a lot of money. We could run this business remotely. We'll live in Portugal. We should consider that. Sound asleep in like 10 seconds, right? Mandala is awake for hours Picturing what kind of schooling we'd have to think through, who we'd have to tell we were moving, what we do with the house that we currently have. And so I learned that pretty quickly from my wife, that that was like, there's a time and a place, and right before bed is not the right time to talk about these big ideas. So don't present my big ideas when someone, like you said, is going to feel like there's pressure on them to walk out the door and start a totally new program, like little kids football program or basketball program. Because I mention off the top of my head, for me, I was allowed to sit in the chaos, and I passed over the order to Nancy, and all of our team appreciated it.

Yeah, it's a vision bomb dropping vision bomb. So. So, Nancy, is that how you feel? Is it. Is that fun for you? Some people think, well, gee, I want to play in the chaos side. I want to do all the ideas and stuff. And when I talk to integrators, I hear things like, nuh, I want you to feed me ideas, and then I want to make them happen. I want to focus on this thing, and that's fun for me. Is that fun for you? No, Order's not fun for you.

Order is.

Order is. Chaos is not.

Okay, I love order. I love problem solving. I'm good at it. And so I do love process and having the to do list, reprioritizing. I'm a stickler for getting stuff done, like executing. And if we're not, it, like, irks me, literally. So that's kind of the box that I live in of, like, order. Are we on time? Early is on time because I want room for mistakes. Or we had a bad day, an emergency happened. So I do think that not only is it my strength, but I enjoy that process. Could I do chaos? Yes, but I don't enjoy it. And I think that's a big difference.

Yeah, takes more energy, right? We're all wired kind of in a certain way, and we may be able to play on the other side of the line, but it takes a lot more energy. And for visionaries listening, sometimes they don't get that. They think everybody's wired like they are, and how could that be? But it's true. People out there like Nancy exist that thrive on creating order. And so that's why integrators are the scarce commodity in this equation. All right, a couple questions about the journey to mastery that we're all on. We're all on this pathway. We're trying to get better. We're trying to master our craft. Nancy, what's something that you do to continue to get better as an integrator?

I think as of recently in a lot of the work that I've been doing, so I have a great mastermind with some of the teams that I work with. They get together. So they're all in some form of leadership. Right. Directors and above. I really like the space of doing that for myself as well. So I've been part of a mastermind as well, where it's not just EOs. There are some people that are running on EOs, but it's essentially anyone second in command. You have to have a certain level of gross revenue for the companies that you work with. So I started diving into that and then having my own coach and a lot of the work that I do with the one on ONES and developing people into leadership. I've realized that I need that for myself or have another place to vent up, so to speak. So I've really dived into that in this last year. I've been attending the EOS conferences for so long that it just kind of all. But it was last year in Orlando, correct. That you did the integrator Masterclass.

Masterclass, yep.

So it's just looking at everything. It's just doing more of the mastery with an eos, but then also outside of that. Right. In terms of leadership development, because one on ones and developing people is such a big part of my responsibility and my role. So I really dive into that right now and just getting better at asking better questions for my one on one sessions with people and kind of meeting them where they are. Because people come into the leadership space at all different levels. And yeah, I can't do a one size fits all with everybody. I have to meet them where they're at. So I'm just trying to be better at delivering that for their development.

Love that. Love that. So jobin is something that you do to continue to master your craft as a visionary.

There are a few things. One is just an EOS mandatory thing. Our same page meeting that pulls more creativity out of me. And so if I'm stuck on an issue, that's the time to bring it up. Nancy's going to ask the tough questions that maybe other people wouldn't ask and she's going to ask why I haven't addressed certain holes in my project or plan. So that is one way that it levels up my. The way I think through the big ideas. The two others Nancy mentioned it, the US Conference That's a big one for us. The first one I attended, I actually recruited 22 people to go with me. I just heard about this thing, EOS 2018. I was going to the conference. I didn't get. I don't work for eos. I didn't get any kickback. I didn't get anything. I just was so excited about what it was doing for me personally as a leader and for my business that I was calling all of my friends who are entrepreneurs and I was like, you have to do this. You have to come. And they're like, it's really expensive. And I said, yeah, do you want to go to cheap experiences? Because cheap is a valuation of quality of product or service, not a price. And I said, there's no such thing as overpriced. There's just underdelivering. And so EOS does not under deliver. And so, yeah, if you think you're paying a bit to go there, you're getting more value than what you're paying, I promise you. And so EOS going to those conferences, sitting in the room where we all kind of laugh about the visionary, but then we're all in there and all the visionaries are like, yeah, but we have the best job. Like, we can get made fun of a little bit because we know we have the best job. So that's the second part. And then the third is joining some of these leadership groups. Right. I'm a member of eo, an entrepreneurs organization, which is. I'm really plugged in locally for that. And then I'm a part of the Human Gathering, which is an organization. There's only a couple hundred of us around the world, and they seek us out. They look for business owners and people in their profession that have a track record of leveraging any success they have to improve the community around them. And so they found me through different social media projects we've worked on. I think they actually found I donated a kidney recently. So they reached out right after that and they said, hey, we're looking for people like you. We want to put groups together where leveraging success means that a lot of people are being blessed. And so are you interested in a community like that? And so love it. Just joined, really enjoy this experience so far. And then also GoBundance, another one that focuses on six key pillars, including financial, business, health, but also family, health, marriage, health, all that stuff. So just finding community with people who are living similar lives and similar lifestyles, and they're pushing to be better versions of themselves all the time. I love what Amanda says all the time. Whenever she finds something in her personality or in her tendencies that she doesn't love, she's like, that describes who I was yesterday and before yesterday, but it does not have to describe today or tomorrow. It's just a choice.

Right.

And so I love being pushed by people that might push back and say, to me, it sounds a little bit like you're stuck in your ways and you haven't reevaluated that recently. And I'm like, oh, boy. But those are the communities that I want to be in. And that's. That's what I found first with my wife Amanda, and then I found it with Nancy, and then now I've been able to find it with other business owners.

Great, Love that. Yeah, we're always trying to get better, always trying to grow. And of course, when it comes to visionaries and integrators, we're trying to master these roles. So before we wrap up, just an opportunity to kind of say, think about your journey as a visionary and an integrator. And we've got listening bunch of visionaries, bunch of integrators, bunch of people that are trying to figure out what, which they are or whether they are other people that are just interested in visionaries and integrators. So when you think about something that would have been helpful for you to hear earlier in this journey, now you've lived it, now you know it, what's a nugget you can send back to your former self, that would have been really helpful for you.

I should have mentioned, in addition to what you asked me earlier about what I'm currently doing to get more into that area of mastery is I wish I would have tapped into other integrator groups and the people that I've met through the conferences and some of these leadership groups, that would have been really. It would have accelerated me at the beginning. Right. So things like the integrator masterclass and just. Yeah, just all the different groups of integrators that I've met at the EOS conferences. It's always great to just kind of have friends like, hey, you know what? Have you ever had this situation? Or maybe I need clarification, like before we had Amanda as our implementer. Right. There's people that maybe have an implementer that I can reach out to and clarify something for me that I'm not sure of.

It's helpful to know you're not alone in the role. Jelebin, what about you? What's a nugget that you Wish you could say back to your former self along this path, trying to think, what.

Was an aha moment that I wish I'd had earlier? I don't know. I was so ready. I read Traction cover to cover twice in 11 days. Like when a friend handed me the book and was like, here's the answer to every question you keep asking. Because I was saying there's something more. There's something I don't know about running a business. And I'm reaching my capacity where I can't be everywhere at once and I can't do everything. I can't check on everything. But I don't know how to delegate responsibilities without abdicating my responsibility to see the company succeed, to see boxes checked, measurables hit. I did not know how to do that. I was deep into spreadsheets, trying to make an operating system without even knowing what one was. I think the thing that I wish people would get earlier is read Rocket Fuel. I undervalued who I was as a business owner. I sit too many times in the room looking around at everybody. I was sitting too many times in the room, looking around at everybody, executing all these awesome things. And then I would just say to. And then the door would close to my office and I just sit there and go, what am. Like, what am I doing? What do I do here? How. Like, then we hit a crisis, or we'd hit a conflict, some sort of conflict or some sort of cultural issue internally, or we. We'd hit a new opportunity. And all of a sudden I'm the one that had the idea, right? And there was no formula. It just came to me and I just assumed everybody else would have that same idea. But I learned through this that my gifting was I am a creative and strategic problem solver. And so all I had to do was hire the people that were wired to execute those solutions and we leveled up immediately. And so it's just a matter of, like, what I wish I had known. Not early in our relationship with Nancy and myself, our work leadership, but early in owning a business was there was a significant piece missing and I didn't have to also do that role. I could hire that role. You talked about it. I made the first mistake I made. I hired a director of coaching. I loved coaching. I hated being in the office. I realized afterwards I should have hired an admin because people are wired differently and they love things that I hate. It's not punishment. When I hire, like someone to do admin work, they're like, oh, my gosh, thank you. I don't have to talk to people. And I'm like, this sounds like the worst job you could ever put me in. But I hired someone to do what I love because I didn't want to punish someone. And so I think realizing earlier on that you're not doing yourself any favors when you hire duplicates of yourself. You touched on this in the beginning. That is not going to get you anywhere. And we had been growing by multiplication. Our sites were growing by. Our reputation was great, but we were not duplicating over and over again exact copies. And Nancy's one that made sure that we did it the right way and the same way every time, followed by.

All, yeah, Breakthrough discovery. When you realize that other people love the stuff you hate. Game changer corollary to that is that just because it doesn't feel like work to you doesn't mean it's not super high value and super high importance. Right. Other people can't do that. Just because it's easy to you doesn't mean it's not really valuable. Right back to undervaluing yourself. So that's really great stuff. So, all right, before we wrap up, quickly, if somebody wants to learn more about your business or more about either one of you, what's the best way for them to reach out to learn more?

We have a family website, b7family.com and on there it hosts all the different projects that we're doing. The story of our adoption. We speak at events about older child adoption, what it looked like for us and what it could look like for you, as well as we host all of our. All of our business projects there. And then soccer shots.com is the way to find us. We're Orange county, and it's a franchise system. So we have all the franchises in Orange county and all the franchises on oahu. So soccer shots.com then you just put in your location. It's an incredible franchise system. The community is full of just incredible people. We're on a march towards 1 million children served every year. We're hoping 25, 20, 26, that as a community will do that. So I have 10,000 players a year in my program, and the minute somebody tells me that it's a significant, my head goes to a million, and I'm like, I'm a very small part of a million. And so that's who we are.

Love that. Nancy, did you miss any place to get in touch?

LinkedIn is always a great place. I do consulting, like leadership development, fractional work. And I'm already kind of plugged in, thankfully into the eos. I have a lot of EOS friends on there.

If people want to follow along, I have an Instagram account, 1kidney adventures. I'm just trying to spread awareness about the importance of organ donation. It doesn't have to be a living donor like myself, but you can't take your organs with you, so you might as well not let them go to waste. And I just tell the story that you can live a full, adventurous life after donating an organ. For myself, I have a 10 year old girl in my community who has more years with her dad because her mom told her story well and it attracted my attention. So One Kidney Adventures. If anybody has any questions about organ donation, what it looks like, what it feels like, I love engaging with curious people and providing more information because, man, these people desperately need our help. And one in seven Americans will go through some form of kidney failure in their life.

Wow. What a meaningful cause. So fantastic. So great people, great company, great story. And so I'm grateful to both of you, Nancy and Jobin, for taking some time with us today so I can ask you questions and kind of learn more about you and hopefully share that story with even more people so it can help them make a difference, help them make an impact. And I know it has, Right? So we've got people listening from all different stages of the journey, but wherever they are, I know that they've picked up some things coming. It can help them get there a little more quickly, help them get there hopefully with a little bit less pain. So to our listeners, as always, thanks for listening. And we don't have a show without you. And so if you've enjoyed today's episode, I encourage you to leave a review that helps other people find out about our podcast. And if more people listen, then we can have an impact on more people and they can have an impact on the world. Hey everybody. So, so great conversation with Jobin and Nancy. Hopefully you enjoyed that as much as I did. So now let's kind of link it back and let's go to the rocket fuel toolbox. So a couple of tools that jumped out for me in this episode. One is Delegate and Elevate. And so you heard Jobin talk about how he was really doing everything. And so the Delegate and Elevate tool walks you through getting clarity on the things that you're really good at, the things that you aren't good at, the things you really love, and the things that you just really don't enjoy at all. And as you begin to understand all the different activities that you're spending time and energy on and which one of those are really below the line, the things that are below the line that we don't enjoy, they sort of drain our energy. And a lot of times we're just not that good at. We want to delegate those. We want to delegate those with intention, meaning that we hand them off to somebody who actually gwcs that stuff. You heard us talk about the aha. The realization that, guess what, there's people out there that actually love the stuff that we hate. They GWC that stuff and we don't. And so we want to get that stuff over to them. They're going to do actually better with it than we will. So delegating and elevating and playing off of that. Another tool in the toolbox I want to point you to is one of the five rules, which is that the integrator is the tiebreaker. You heard Jobin talk about how he was at a point in his career, in his professional life where he frankly was fatigued by all the decision making. He didn't want to decide this way or that way. He didn't want to decide now or later. He's got ideas, he's got thoughts at a high level strategically, but kind of the day to day decision was beginning to wear him down. And at the same time he trusts that he's missing things, he's missing stuff that the integrator feels that the integrator brings. And a lot of that is perspective. Perspective about how a new idea fits into the plan, fits into our ability to go and execute and achieve that vision. So it puts the integrator in this really powerful and effective spot to be able to see the big picture. And so when we've got a decision to make that we can't just easily come to this way or that way. They can hear all the sides, whether it's from the visionary or from one of the functional leaders over here or one of the functional leaders over there. They can kind of take it all in and they can consider the greater good and the long term best interest of the company. And they can make the call so we're not just stuck there. They can make that call and move us forward so we can begin to execute in that direction instead of getting stuck and indecisive and just kind of hanging out there in someplace we don't want to be. And then finally, the last tool is the integrator. Job description. So you heard Jobin talk about when he Got ready to go out and look for his integrator. He used a tool from Rocket Fuel, which is basically lays out at a high level. This is what the integrator does in the form of a job description. And that's a great place to start when you go visionaries and look for your integrator. Because that language, the things that are in that job description are going to resonate with somebody who's wired for that, right? So Nancy saw that, she read that and she's like, yep, I'm good at all that. That's me. And here's a company that's doing something that's interested. And then of course, she found out that it was a leader that she was interested in being, you know, connected to. And so it just all worked and went from there. So don't forget that that's out there as a tool for you to use as well. So if you're wanting to learn more, Please go to rocketfueluniversity.com Take the Visionary Integrator assessment if you haven't already and learn more about the rocket Fuel tools that are available to help you. But become truly great as a visionary, as an integrator, and as a visionary integrator duo. Become a part of the community. And I look forward to seeing you in there. Till next time, go rock it. Are you a visionary looking to take your organization to new Heights? New in 2024, the Visionary Masterclass is designed to help you lead your team under a common vision, manage your energy more effectively, and further your knowledge of a mastery level visionary integrator relationship. Register for an upcoming session@rocketfueluniversity.com.